Brutal Shift is Alex Nowacki from Idaho, and he has many faces, of which Boar might be the best known. It is the one with the most releases. Brutal Shift only has one listed on Discogs, so this is Alex’ number two. I must admit it’s the first time I’ve heard of Alex and his project, but it’s definitely a name I’ll remember for good reasons. The cassette has 15 minutes per side, divided into parts where. I don’t know if they are considered loose tracks, but I’ll write the review descriptively for you. Because: This is really nice!
The first part of side A is a noisy layer with loads of filtering and modulation with subtle synth layers in the background, creating a really nice atmosphere. It could be considered some kind of harsh ambient wall maybe. There’s only too much happening for that. The bit crushers and digital manipulation are all over the place, but it ends abruptly after a little over 5 minutes. The following part is based on a deep synth layer with a long attack combined with a minimal, irritating yet beautiful layer where really a lot is happening. I want to play it as loud as possible, but it gets too irritating for that; all the movement in modulation is gorgeous. After three minutes, the sound pallet changes, and a more destructive white noise-based sound is used with that same slow attack. And even though the sounds used are more ‘in your face’, that minimalistic sound from the beginning was more disturbing. Weird how you will notice different things on different volumes. Especially when the change in sound continues, we’re slowly presented with a beautiful ‘ringing’ sound drone towards the end.
The reverse side opens with an adorable, synthy drone with rattling sounds of unknown origin over it. It slowly builds and after for minutes flows into a minimal delay /reverb based sound with slow variation. And then the moment is there where sounds are added with which the saturation of the delay /reverb setting is tested towards its feedback point. The exploration of the sound generation is further explored with different sounds being fed into the system and some very nice things are happening there. After around nine minutes, the main sound generation is set aside, and an atmosphere of desolation is generated with a simple yet effective two-sound theme. And the desolation is suddenly disrupted by anger and despair, resulting in a slow, repetitive structure reminiscent of a mix of death, industrial, and drone/noise. And ending in a minimally modulated drone again.
The sudden ending of a few sounds at a few moments is the only negative thing I can think of. It probably has a reason, but it ruins a bit of the excellent atmosphere, nicely generated sounds and continuity of the recording. Other than that, get this guy a release on a CD or vinyl. If this is only #2 …
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